Case manager Hala Jawad (left) of Access California Services in Anaheim works with an applicant at a job fair Friday. Access California Services helps refugees and asylum seekers to find jobs . It held a job fair Friday where 54 of the 70 applicants scored seasonal jobs. , COURTESY OF EMAN ELSHIYAB

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Access California Services in Anaheim held a job fair Friday where 54 of the 70 applicants scored a seasonal job. The organization assists refugees and asylum seekers to find jobs. COURTESY OF EMAN ELSHIYAB

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Nahla Nayali is the founder and executive director of Access California Services in Anaheim. The organization held a job fair Friday where 54 of the 70 applicants scored a seasonal job. The organization assists refugees and asylum seekers to find jobs. ANA VENEGAS STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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Nahla Nayali is the founder and executive director of Access California Services in Anaheim. The organization held a job fair Friday where 54 of the 70 applicants scored a seasonal job. The organization assists refugees and asylum seekers to find jobs. ANA VENEGAS STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Syrian refugees already faced the horrors of civil war, family disruption, loss of income and emotional trauma.

Now, days after terrorists killed 130 people in Paris, a few hundred Syrians trying to stay in Orange County and thousands of others trying to get into the country face a new hurdle.

Islamic State, a major player in the Syrian civil war, took credit for the Nov. 13 attack. And one of the killers was found to have a fake Syrian passport, with security officials saying he probably arrived in Europe by boat along with a group of Syrian refugees.

Almost instantly, fear of Syrians – and of the potential of terrorism – took hold.

Dozens of U.S. governors said they wouldn’t let Syrian refugees settle in their states. Presidential candidates suggested tighter scrutiny of Syrians and, in some cases, of all Muslims. The U.S. House voted to make the already-difficult process of getting refugee status virtually impossible for Syrians.

And Syrians who have landed in Orange County – a few as legal refugees and the vast majority as asylum seekers – say they went from finally feeling secure in their adopted homeland to feeling like targets.

“People are really starting to live in fear, total fear of what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said Bill Dalati, who emigrated from Syria to Anaheim 30 years ago and helped his brother’s family seek asylum in 2014.

“They’re listening to these candidates say they want to kick them out, and send them back to this place they’ve already traveled thousands of miles to get away from. ... It’s not American.”

Thursday, the House voted 289-137 to suspend allowing Syrian refugees in while pushing to intensify the screening process. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the effort, which still has to go through the Senate.

“Last week’s horrific attacks in Paris exposed the grave threats we face from terrorists seeking to exploit refugee programs,” said Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and supporter of the GOP bill.

Though some Democrats voted to support the bill, Orange County legislators voted along party lines. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, co-sponsored a proposed substitute bill that would reinforce the screening process for Syrians while protecting refugee women and children fleeing Islamic State.

“Three-quarters of Syrian refugees are women and children; a quarter of the refugees are over the age of 60,” Sanchez, D-Orange, said. “Refugees are not the enemy.”

Over 4 million Syrians are living outside their home country, the United Nation reports, with a flood of people fleeing to Europe in recent months as the conflict has escalated.

Part of the issue domestically is about the word “refugee.”

So far in 2015, exactly one Syrian family – a father, mother and child – has arrived in Orange County as refugees.

That family spent two years in Egypt after leaving Syria, finishing background checks and paperwork needed to get the legally recognized status “refugee.” The U.S. has resettled 2,280 other refugees since the so-called Arab Spring in March 2011, according to figures from the State Department. California has accepted the most at 252, with Texas and Michigan trailing behind. And the Obama administration has said it would like to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016.

But about 800 other Syrians are also in Orange County, having come in the past four years as asylum seekers, a legal designation that wasn’t addressed in the bill. It’s unclear how many Syrian asylum seekers are in the U.S. now.

What is clear is that both groups are here for the same reasons.

“They’re fleeing from war. They’re fleeing from air raids, ground artillery fire. It’s just been a constant for the last four years,” said Suhail Mulla, associate director of Access California Services, an Anaheim group that provides services for Arab Americans and other Muslim Americans. “People stay as long as they possibly can. That’s their home. Nobody wants to leave their home,” he added.

“But when the danger hits close, then people say, ‘That’s enough. We can’t do this anymore.’”

Dalati, who came to the U.S. to start a business, said his brother, sister-in-law and three adult nephews, fled Syria in 2013 and went to Jordan, where they spent two years trying to come to the United States.

“We needed to bring them to a safe haven, and thank God we were able to,” said Dalati, 50, who runs an insurance agency. “But it’s those people that are left behind that have no one to help them.”

Because of the violence they’ve seen, Mulla said most new arrivals have suffered some emotional if not physical trauma.

Kinda Hibrawi has seen that trauma firsthand, as she spent the past two years traveling between her Irvine home and the Syrian-Turkish border to help children displaced by the war. She was flying back from her most recent trip just as the House was voting on limiting Syrian refugees.

“People have suffered a great deal and are still suffering,” said Hibrawi, whose father emigrated from Syria in 1970.

“It’s a shame that we’re adding to that suffering by closing off our borders.”

Since spring 2011, Orange County has welcomed 618 refugees from Iraq, where portions of the country are under Islamic State control; 259 refugees have come from Iran; smaller numbers have come from Afghanistan and Somalia. The bill from Congress doesn’t target refugees from any of those countries.

“Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been 745,000 refugees settled in America. None of them have been implicated or arrested on any domestic terrorism charges,” Mulla said.

“We’re saddened, anxious, worried that this door is trying to be shut closed to Syrian refugees – and Iraqi refugees as well,” he said.

“We feel that America has historically been a place of refuge for so many different people fleeing from so many different sorts of persecution, and we are sad to see that there’s a big push for those doors to be closed.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, voted for the bill but also introduced a measure that would prioritize refugee status for Christians and Yazidis targeted by Islamic State.

Fewer than 2 percent of Syrian refugees allowed into the United States since 2011 have been Christians and Yazidis, according to State Department figures.

But the legal hurdles are just part of the road for Syrians trying to stay here.

Since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, some mosques around the country have been vandalized and some Muslims have been harassed, according to news reports.

Locally, so far, the friction has been verbal, in the form of threatening phone calls, said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, a Garden Grove-based umbrella organization of local mosques and Muslim organizations.

But Syed said he’s also received more calls than ever of another variety – from people of different faiths offering words of solidarity.

“That’s heartwarming,” Syed said.

“At the end of the day, this plague is not affecting one group of people. It’s affecting all of us.”

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